How To...

Handy guide looking at the results of the Yahoo yslow FireFox plugin and how to handle some of the performance issues using Ruby on Rails or web server (nginx) configuration tricks.

acts_as_ferret plugin enables simple integration of the Ferret search engine into a Ruby on Rails project.

Solr is an open source enterprise search server based on the Lucene Java search library. SolRuby is dedicated to information about integrating with Solr from Ruby.

Step by step instructions for installing a full Ruby and Rails stack (with Mongrel and MySQL) on a Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) system. These instructions have you compile almost all of the code and install a copy of the applications into /usr/local. This process does not disturb Apple installed software.

Instructions for installing RMagick on Mac OS X, including how to use MacPorts to get ImageMagick running. Part of the larger documentation set for RMagick.

Blog from Google’s go-to guy on site rankings.

Blog on Rails performance tuning, from the author of the railsbench gem.

Exploring the Security of Rails and associated technologies.

Includes interviews with a variety of folks from the Rails community.

From the creators of the New Relic Rails Performance Management system.

Announcement-only list for issues relating to Rails security.

A collection of screencasts and interviews about Rails application performance. Put together by New Relic, but focused on the general issues, not on their monitoring solution.

Are you accepting sensitive user data? Passwords, credit card numbers, etc. By default, Rails stores all submitted parameters in plain text in the logs. This episode will show you how to filter this sensitive input so it doesn’t show up in the log file.

Great list of tools for analyzing and optimizing your site’s search engine rankings, and for learning more about how search engines see your site and how people search for it.

Httperf is a tool for measuring web server performance. It provides a flexible facility for generating various HTTP workloads and for measuring server performance. The focus of httperf is not on implementing one particular benchmark but on providing a robust, high-performance tool that facilitates the construction of both micro- and macro-level benchmarks.

A $199 package the provides all the code for incorporating maps into a Rails application

The most widely used payment processing library for Ruby on Rails. Provides interfaces to more than 30 gateways with a single, abstracted API. Extracted from the Shopify hosted service.

A high-quality, but not inexpensive, package that translates HTML/CSS files into PDF.

Rails plugin to support the X-Sendfile protocol, which enables you to use Rails to do authentication while having the web server deliver the file.

Apache 2 module that enables your application server to tell Apache when to send a static file. Use with Rails Xsendfile plugin.

A “micro-CMS” (content management system) Rails plug-in.

Plugin that bundles multiple CSS and JavaScript files into a single pair of files to improve page rendering times.

Plugin for building location-based apps; provides geocoding, location finders, and distance calculation.

Plugin that provides a JavaScript widget for entering dates in a mini-calendar, and also parses many common text versions of dates — even things like “next Tuesday”.

Plugin lets you track visitors, referrers, robots, search terms and more.

Simple gem/script that helps analyze Rails log files for hotspots.

A stand-alone performance diagnostic tool from Rubysophic, which plans to introduce a hosted service to complement the software.

Set of scripts for doing benchmarking and performance analysis of Rails apps.

ruby-prof is a fast code profiler for Ruby.

Tutorial on uploading multiple files to a Rails application using a Flash-based UI.

Rails software bundle for creating recurring billing using the Braintree gateway. This is commercial software, not open source.

Spree is distributed as both a Rails plugin as well as a Ruby gem (requires Rails 2.0.2). You use the gem to create your application which automatically installs the plugin in your project. The newly created project is actually a fully functional store. All that remains is for the developer to customize and style to taste.

Mole is a gem that instruments your application and stores usage and performance information in the database.

Plugin that provides a cleaner interface to the PDF::Writer gem.

Listing of stress and load testing tools that are useful with Ruby on Rails (and other) web applications.

An open-source content management system written in Rails, developed in Japan.

Add gmail-like keyword search (using keyword:value pairs) to your application.

Flash video streaming platform built on Rails.

Rails plugin for accessing the FeedBurner API.

A simple plugin that inserts the google analytics tracking code in your layout.

Gem for analyzing Rails production logs to find the slow parts of your code.

An exploratory project to automatically produce better documentation for Rails applications.

The FeedFetcher plugin locates RSS feeds, given the URL of a site.

Doesn’t appear to have been updated in a while, but still lots of logging/analysis tools to check out.

Excellent, detailed presentation on the finer points of sending and receiving email from Rails applications

Good overview of what EXPLAIN is, how its results are calculated, and what all of the data is presents means.

Presentation slides, recording, and quick reference for Httperf talk at www2007 conference.

Talk from RailsConf Europe 2007 on scaling Rails applications, based on the Twitter experience.

Nice cheatsheets for various aspects of Rails, including Active Record validation errors, migrations, form helpers, and Action Mailer.

Detailed ebook on keeping your Ruby on Rails application secure.

Guide to using memcached, an in-memory object caching system.

Extensive description of how to use the Active Merchant payment gateway.

A $9 e-book from the publishers of the PeepCode screencasts, written by one of the ActiveMerchant developers.

Includes a complete sample application that shows how to integrate PayPal’s Direct Payment API and PayPal Express Checkout. The Direct Payment API, when used with a PayPal account approved for Website Payments Pro, allows you to capture credit card information at your site rather than redirecting your users to the PayPal site. Integrating the API for PayPal Express Checkout allows you to immediately get transaction details when sending users to the PayPal site to complete payment.

Ruby on Rails plug-in and hosted service for performance analysis. Can be used in development and in production. “Lite” service is free; more features available on paid plans.

Ruby on Rails application monitoring tool. Installs as a gem on your server. Supports plug-ins for extending its monitoring functions. Limited free plan with 30-minute monitoring interval for a single server, plus a variety of paid plans for multiple servers, more plug-ins, and more frequent monitoring.

Hosted service for monitoring the performance of your Ruby on Rails application, as well as all the software components of your hosting infrastructure.

A new socially networked application profiling tool for Ruby on Rails applications. You can view the performance details for your application, and if you want help, you can upload your performance data to the FiveRuns site, where colleagues or the Rails community at large can offer help.